Voiceover Demo Recorded. (A Recap)

Well, I have officially recorded my first Voiceover Demo.
Saturday afternoon at Soundscape Studio.
I was there for a little over an hour.

I braved the snowstorm in a cab from the theater to the recording studio on the South Side. The weather was bad, bad, bad. Blizzard snowstorm and the sidewalks were piled up with eight inches of snow. My feet were damp almost all day long. And because of the terrible weather, I was ten minutes late to the studio. No worries, though. Kat Hart and Mike The Engineer were just wrapping up with Jamie and Mo, when I got there. I met them outside and we shouted a brief conversation across Wabash Ave.

Inside, Kat Hart gave me a big hug and said, "Don't worry. You're going to do great today!" Which is, i think, atypical for a producer/talent relationship. But Kat Hart is also a bit of a stage mother and a cheerleader. So, the extra attention was appreciated. I have to admit that I was a little bit nervous about the whole experience.

Downstairs, I was given a mug of water to keep my throat liquidated and introduced to Mike The Engineer. I saw the recording studio and the mixing board. In front of it, was a plate glass window that showed the studio. Red walls and big, grey pads of foam on the walls. The mic hung on a boom arm, had a windscreen in front of it and big, foam earpads on the headset.

I entered the studio and set the music stand to hold my copy. We had selected 10 possible commercial spots and 5 possible narrative pieces. The commercials were designed to show a wide array of dialects, characters and voices. British. French. German. African-American. Southern. Dad-like. And formal speaking tones. The narrative pieces were a little bit longer and showcased the fact that I could also take dry, dramatic text and make it sound smart, intelligible and coherent. That I could breathe life into dry text.

We set the order that we were going to work in and went from there. Katharine gave me a short pep talk and ran me through some vocal warm-ups, counted me down and we ran through the first piece. A piece we titled "Climate Control".

"You Can't Solve The Climate Crisis! It's too big for one person..."

As soon as the recording started, the booth mic clicked out of the headset and I heard my own voice, warm, rich and full. It sounded really, really good to me. Supported and strong. Professional. It was a voice that I could easily imagine in commercial spots and voiceover work. And I say that, not as a pat on my own back, but as a new awareness of how good a professional recording studio actually sounds. And maybe my first glimpse at how I can actually, really and truly do something like this... for real.

Well, of course, because I was nervous, the first take wasn't usable. Nervous energy actually tightens up the face and vocal cords. When you are nervous, your voice gets higher and flatter, as everything constricts. So, we ran some more warm-ups and loosened everything up. I thought to myself, "you can do this, kid. Just relax. Pretend like you're a pro and you've done this a million times," and that worked and I did relax, considerable. The second take of that spot was much, much better.

"The Brauhaus has been serving up Good Cheer for 40 years in Chicago's historic Lincoln Square Neighborhood!"

And that's what we did for the next hour or so. Commercial spot after commercial spot. In some cases, we didn't have to do a second take. In most cases, we did one more for safety sake and then moved on to the next piece. If I nailed a spot or did a take that we all loved, we all high-fived. I high-fived in the air and behind the monitors, I could see Mike and Katharine high-five in the air too, simulating a high-five through a plate-glass window and from four or five feet away. If I fucked up a take or a phrase, which didn't happen often, I would stop and we would all have a short laugh and then go right back at it. Just like professionals. Focused on the job, working efficiently, but having fun with it too.

We finished all ten commercial spots and Katharine kept a good ear for vocal range. We want to demonstrate that I have high voices and low voices. A wide spread of characters. Occasionally, Katharine would ask me to try another run at a piece, raising the energy or changing to a chest-tone, instead of a head-tone. I would make the requested adjustment and try another run at it. Mike The Engineer commented that he was really impressed by how easily I took feedback and adjusted my performance for it. That's something a lot of other voiceover actors struggle with.

"There are many unmistakable characteristics that make a Bentley."

We took a little more time with the narrative pieces. Making sure that we got them as tight and as clean as we possibly could. I worked on breathing deeply and using my breath well. I worked carefully through each piece, making the sentences make as much logical sense as I could. The last piece that we recorded was the first two stanzas from a Garrison Keillor poem that I've actually quoted here before.

"A summer night, and you, and paradise.."

I'm a big fan of Keillor and hopefully he won't mind that I chose him as inspiration for my own voiceover demo. We did three runs at the poem. Each time, Katharine would push me for a more intimate performance. Something smaller. Something breathier. Something more passionate. She pushed and pushed and in my final take, I pulled my copy up closer to me and leaned in to the microphone and pictured Someone Special in my mind and delivered the poem to her...

"A summer night, and you, and paradise,
So lovely and so full of grace,
Above your head, the universe has hung its lights,
And I reach out my hand to touch your face.

I believe in impulse, in all that is green,
Believe in the foolish vision that comes true,
Believe that all that is essential is unseen,
And for this lifetime I believe in you."

I finished and there was absolute silence. Nobody spoke. And then Katharine clicked on the booth mic and said, "I think that's it. Grab your water and come in here. Let's talk." I gathered up the pile of completed sides on the floor and my water and walked into the other room. I felt like I had completed something. Like I had done something, but I didn't know exactly WHAT I had done. When I got into the mixing room, I could see that Katharine was a little red-eyed from the poem. I think it meant something special to her too. Mike The Engineer had a weird look on his face. Which I came to find out was a look of surprise. Mike and Katharine talked to me, from that point on, giving me their feedback.

Mike said, "I think you have a very viable, commercial possibility here. You have a voice that does dialects and characters, very, very well. But you can also navigate your way through narrative pieces well. Most voiceover actors can't do that. They can usually do one or the other. But not both. That makes you a much more marketable voiceover actor."

Katharine said, "Honey, you don't know it yet, but you just laid down a really, really strong voiceover demo. It has range and quality and once we get done processing it and laying music under it, you're going to sound so, so good. I smell money, money, MONEY!"

Mike said, "I also like how your voices and character work doesn't sound artificial. On one hand, I know that those are clearly not your voices and indeed are not even REAL voices, but they sound very natural. Not like a voice that you're putting on. Those voices sound very "lived in"."

Katharine said, "You should listen to Mike here. While we were recording your pieces, Mike would say, "Wow. He nailed that one" and was laughing, here at the console. And this is an older man, jaded, who has heard tons of voiceover demos and commercial copy. If you're tickling his funnybone, then you're doing something really special."

I bounced back and forth between the two of them, trying to take it all in. My old, Southern-Baptist training made me want to resist the compliments. It was a little bit difficult to sit there and take in such overwhelmingly positive feedback. Surely, I'm not all that good. And didn't I pay for this service? And does this ego-stroking come as a part of that package? I was a little bit cynical.

Katharine asked me, "How do you feel about it?" I answered truthfully, "I have no idea. It's all so new. I'm still just taking it all in." Katharine and Mike assured me that I should be feeling really good about my work and that I should be proud of what we'd done there together.

Mike said, "I understand what you're feeling. And when we get you in, in two weeks, and you hear your own voice remastered and cleaned up and laid on a bed or appropriate music, I think you'll be really impressed with what you did here."

And that's the plan. I go back in two or three weeks and hear the finished product. I also get a CD of the tracks and then they email the Mp3's to me. Mike also offered me a cheap possibility of producing extra copies of my disk, if I wanted to go that route. I send out my tracks to voiceover agencies in-town and anyone else who uses voice-work. (Video game companies, audio-book publishers and other talent agencies.) I take every gig that I get offered, regardless of the pay, and I build up a library of actual voiceover work, to add to my forthcoming website. I begin laying down a foundation of work to get me future VO work. That's how it's done.

So, that was my first experience in a professional studio, recording my voiceover demo. I thought I would tell you all of that, not to demonstrate how excited my coach and my engineer were, but to give you all of the information that I was taking in, in the process. The whole thing was a little overwhelming. I'm still processing it. I enjoyed myself. I feel like it was a step in the right direction. One more move towards being the performer that I want to be.

Onwards and Upwards,
Mr.B

EDITED LATER TO ADD:
I would be a very ungrateful voiceover student, indeed, if I didn't mention that you, too, could do the same thing. My voiceover instructors name is Katharine Hart. She is available to put you through the same program. You can email her at a hart felt life @ live.com. (Add that all together to make her email address. I've split up to spare her from spambots.) She charged me $900 for the whole process and I was able to pay that off in installments. I bet you can work out a similar deal with her. Shoot her a message and tell her that I sent you. She will likely say nice things about me. (My friends, Jamie and Mo, are going through the program, right now. So, this is very doable.)